Event on 4/19/04 in Laghmani
Sordor (one name only), isolates himself from family and friends. Sordor, about 26, was a farmer in the Afghan town of Laghmani in the Shomali Valley and now suffers from mental illness brought on from decades of war in Afghanistan. His father was killed by a mine and his brother lost a leg to a mine. Many farmers have abandoned fields of crops, including table grapes because of unexploded landmines and ordinance. Anna Badkhen / The Chronicle

Photo: Anna Badkhen

Event on 4/19/04 in Laghmani
Sordor (one name only), isolates...

Afghanistan's invisible war wounds / Mental illness rife in land ravaged by decades of fighting

2004-04-20 04:00:00 PDT Laghmani, Afghanistan -- Sordar once raised grapes in the lush Shomali Valley north of Kabul. Three years ago, exhausted by war and grief, he shut his eyes and dropped his forehead into the palm of his right hand.

And has stayed like that even since.

On a good day, Sordar sits in a chair propped up against the mud-brick wall of his family compound, his long, unkempt black beard concealing his strong chest, his right hand propping up his forehead, his eyes closed.

On a bad day, he stumbles into his spartan room and locks the door, often staying inside for three days in a row. Sometimes, 29-year-old Sordar "becomes wild," his brothers say, beating everyone he can lay his heavy hands on -- his tiny widowed mother, Gul Alai, whose eyes are always wet with tears; his two younger brothers, who struggle to feed the impoverished family; his terrified two younger sisters -- stopping only when he is exhausted.

But most of the time, Sordar, who like many Afghans goes by just one name, lies on the corduroy-covered mattress in his room and holds his face in his right hand, as if trying to pull together his disturbed mind, shattered -- like his country -- by decades of warfare and loss.

Two years after U.S.-led forces drove out the hard-line Taliban regime, ending 22 years of war that began when the Soviets invaded in 1979, Sordar's village of Laghmani still bears the scars of the Soviet occupation and pitched battles in the 1990s between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Rocks painted red mark fields, paths and streams where Soviet soldiers and Afghan mujahedeen planted mines in this village 40 miles from the capital, Kabul. Near the family's small vineyard, a girls' school stands in ruins, its walls enclosing a rubble-filled crater left by a Taliban missile. Sordar's wrecked mind is not as graphic a consequence of war as the demolished buildings or the nearby minefield that claimed the life of his father. It is one of Afghanistan's invisible war wounds, which have been largely ignored by the international community helping to rebuild the shell-shocked nation.

After more than two decades of war, 95 percent of Afghanistan's 22.9 million people have been affected psychologically, the World Health Organization estimates, and one in five suffers from mental health problems. Dr. Timorsha Musamim, chief psychiatrist at the Alaoddin One Hundred Bed Mental Hospital in Kabul, believes the figure is higher and that as many as 30 percent of Afghans may suffer from anxiety, depression, psychosomatic problems such as insomnia and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. A survey of Kabul women last year by the International Medical Corps, a relief group based in Santa Monica, showed that 98 percent met the standard diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress syndrome, major depression or severe anxiety.

Yet donors allocated just $100,000 for mental health last year for the whole country, which has only four mental hospitals. The largest is the misnamed Alaoddin One Hundred Bed Mental Hospital, which has only 60 beds. The state-financed hospital has barely enough money to provide the most basic treatment: sedating the more violent patients with haloperidol injections. The hospital expects the destitute patients' relatives to buy other medicines on the open market.

Sordar's family never left Laghmani, not even when the front line ran right through the village. They didn't have enough money to flee the fighting. Now, Sordar cannot flee the war in his head because the family doesn't have enough money to pay the $20 cab fare to the mental hospital in Kabul or to pay for his treatment there.

No one knows how much Sordar's disturbed mind allows him to recall as he sits with his hand over his face.

His younger brother, Shakar, 25, remembers growing up during the decade- long Soviet occupation in the 1980s, when Afghan mujahedeen blew up Soviet tanks along the Old Road that runs through Laghmani. He remembers the 1990s, when Taliban and Northern Alliance forces pushed each other back and forth across the Shomali Valley, changing the front line several times a year.

From their position a few miles to the south, Taliban shelled Laghmani regularly, keeping the villagers in constant fear, recalled Mohammad Agha, 15, Sordar's little brother. Throughout the shelling, Sordar, the oldest child, always did his best to take care of his siblings and help his father, Mohammed Yusuf, with the vineyard -- 150 gnarled vines on a quarter acre of land that are the family's main source of income.

Then, one early spring day in 1999, Mohammed Yusuf, a thick-boned man with a long beard, stepped on a land mine while tending the vineyard. He lost both legs, and shrapnel pierced his arms and neck. After 50 agonizing days in a hospital, he died in Sordar's arms. The young man brought the body home and buried his father in a small village cemetery outside his family compound, marking it with a green flag, a sign Afghans typically reserve for a martyr's grave.

"That was when Sordar stopped eating food," Mohammad Agha recalled. "He started to cry all the time. He didn't sleep well at night. He would go to our father's grave every day and cry there."

"He worried about the family a lot," Shakar said. "He worried about our mother. He was upset about our father. He was worried that we didn't have enough money. He worried about what would happen if the Taliban took over the village."

Then, three years ago, Sordar closed his eyes, covered his face with his hand and fell quiet.

"He would just hold his head with his hand, as if he were thinking," Mohammad Agha said. Once a week, Sordar would ask for water or naswar, a smokeless tobacco Afghan men sometimes chew. Sometimes, he would eat the food his mother served him.

But at other times, Sordar suddenly became aggressive and violent. He hurled rocks at visitors who entered his compound and beat Gul Alai, whose face bears scars and brown bruises from Sordar's heavy farmer's fists. He would beat his sisters if they spoke to him or made loud noises.

The only time he takes his hand away from his forehead anymore, Shakar said, is to strike someone next to him.

"He wants to escape from his pain," he explained. "It is too loud in his head."